


A Different Call

by februarystars



Series: The Widowmakers [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Canon Het Relationship, Comics/Movie Crossover, Department X, Developing Relationship, Espionage, F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Implied Character Death, Red Room, SHIELD, Spies & Secret Agents, eventually, not a crossover but an amalgamation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/februarystars/pseuds/februarystars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cold in Siberia when Clint meets Natalia Romanova.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Call

_Natalia Romanova_

Sent to kill a traitor. He'd betrayed his country and the children under his protection. She stalked him to a warehouse where he'd been gathering intelligence to sell. She had known he was hours from fleeing the country.

Her orders were to obtain information on his American masters. She was cleared to use all necessary force to gather the intel and dispose of the traitor and his bank of information.

He tried all of the usual tactics: bribery, sympathy, weeping, and fighting. Finally, he began to shout nonsense at her. She ignored him while she searched for any last hidden pieces of equipment or documents that would betray his existence or her hand in its end. She realized after an hour or so that he was yelling her name. Her _real_ name. Her whole name. She was behind him, knife pressed to his neck before he could yell it again.

"What do you know about me?" she hissed in his ear.

He laughed, throat coarse and bloody from hours of yelling. "I know more about you than you ever will. I know about Barnes and the Red Room and all of the lies that fill your ruined head."

The shock was an unpleasant mixture of nausea and absolute terror. He switched to English, or at least she seemed to remember him doing so when she later told the story. She couldn't imagine why.

"Pretty little girl thinks she was a ballerina. Have you seen the ballerina's feet? You're no ballerina. You're a murderess soaked in blood and clinging to lies. You're not _the_ Black Widow; you're _a_ Black Widow. You know nothing! Go ahead and kill me. It will be easier than what they plan for you when you stop being so useful, my little dancer."

And she had killed him. She wasn't sure she'd meant to. Her memory, after all, wasn't very reliable.

Sixteen hours later, Clint Barton made a cautious journey down a corridor in the warehouse.

"Go to Siberia, they said. It's not as cold as you think, they said. The Cold War is over, they said. The worst that can happen to you now is curable with penicillin, they said."

"Clint?" the voice made his earpiece crackled painfully.

"Yes?" he stopped walking to answer the disembodied voice in his ear. He hadn't quite got used to it and didn't like losing one ear to a glorified telephone.

"Can you stop fucking talking to yourself? We've got at least one warm body in there."

"You wound me. I was talking to you, not to myself. I am trying to win your heart with bravado and humor in the face of life-threatening danger. Is it working?" he asked.

The only answer was another crackle of static. He grinned.

There was definitely something peculiar going on here. Something wasn't right. He had, in addition to letting his feelings about the godforsaken mission be known, been trying to draw out whoever was lurking in the shadows.

He reached the last door of the corridor.

"And what's behind door number three?" he said, kicking in the door and dropping into a crouch.

His target. Perhaps she would be beautiful under other circumstances but as she was covered in blood, barefoot and crying, the attraction was a little lost on him. She had no weapons in her hands and was pointing at her feet. She was speaking Russian and was utterly beyond his understanding.

__

_Shit,_ he thought.

"Shit," he said.

"Clint?" the voice was back in his ear and a great deal more panicked than before.

"Clint, who is that? Who is talking? Why is she talking about dancing? Where is the asset?"

He took in the situation, the babbling woman and the dead man next to her. Bloody handprints on files and papers and the computer. The guy he was supposed to save was dead and the woman he was supposed to "eliminate" was staring up at him with unfocused eyes.

He sighed and took out the earpiece.

"Sprechen sie, err, English?" he asked her.

She tilted her head, suddenly alert, and frowned.

"Amerikanskaya?" she asked.

"Ah, si," he said.

"I would like to defect to the United States of America," she said in perfect, unaccented English. He sighed.

"I'm supposed to take you out," he said, holstering his pistol and dropping to the floor next to her.

She frowned again.

"Out like a date?" she asked.

"Let's not start picking out the invitations just yet. I need to make sure that Fury doesn't murder us both," he said.

She seemed resigned to not understanding what he was talking about and shrugged her shoulders. She leaned her head against the wall behind her and eyed him carefully.

"Hill?" he asked, reinserting his earphone.

"Clint, what the hell?" she sounded furious.

"Two to evac, one to recover and you'd best send in a cleaner," he said, eyeing his would-be target.

"Clint, we are not cleared for this," Hill was fairly screeching in his ear.

"Then get clearance," he said, "because this is happening. Barton out."

He took the earpiece out again and looked around for the Black Widow's shoes. He found two boots and one sock and handed them to her.

She looked away as she put them on. When she was done, he held out a hand to help her up.

"Have you got a jacket or something? Because it's fucking cold outside," he said as he led her back down the corridor and out into the frozen day to wait for their ride home.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved Clint/Natasha in the film and promptly dove into some Avengers comics where I fell deeply in love with the Winter Soldier storyline. This is kind of a hybrid of mostly movie and a little comic book universe. The bit about Natasha's feet not being as bruised and ruined as a ballerina's would be is taken from Marvel Knights Black Widow #4.


End file.
